The Return of the E-Skateboard

Kickstarter has spoken. The Marbel Board—the lightest electric skateboard ever built—has just been crowd-funded almost three times over. Popular Mechanics spoke with Matt Belcher, a materials engineer and founder of the Florida-based company, about the 9 lb board's inception, the technological advancements that support it, and why this skateboard is a smart choice for urban commuters.

Can you tell me a little about the Marbel Board?

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Sure. The Marbel Board is an electric, motorized skateboard. All the electronics and batteries are integrated into the deck, and its made of carbon fiber and Kevlar and weighs 9 lbsjust about a single pound heavier than a normal skateboard of its size. It looks just like a regular long board too, except theres a small motor on the bottom that powers the rear wheels.

You control the throttle and braking with either our handheld remote or your phone, and it goes a little over ten milesand thats real world miles, hills included. And it has a top speed of 20 mph and a recharge time of about 90 minutes.

Where did the idea for this design come from?

About four years ago my wife and I moved from a suburb of Indianapolis to downtown Tampa, Fl. We found that in a radius of a few miles of our new place there were lots of great restaurants and bars. But being in a city makes it pretty impractical to drive, and while its also an easy walk, the gorgeous weather here means youd often show up super sweaty. So I started looking into electric skateboardsI didnt grow up skateboarding, but it sounded like a cool ideaand had the idea of making one.

Now electric skateboards have been around for 20 years, but if you look the traditional electric skateboard, its just a wooden deck with a box screwed to the bottom of it. Those can be up to 35 lbsreally too heavy to be carrying around with youand still only go something like 5 miles.

And when we first started, that was exactly what we were making. But we gradually began to see that by integrating everything into a single component, we were making the board not just lighter but easier for the rider to use. And really its grown from there.

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What advancements in motor tech let you build this at such a low weight?

Well its not just the motor. The motors were using have been around for a whilegranted, weve added some sensors and changed the algorithm they uses to improve their efficiency. And their price has gone down.

I consider the boards unibody, carbon fiber deck to be one of our main innovations. Because its essentially a single piece, we do away with a lot of unnecessary parts, and that helped us dump some significant weight.

Also, the batteries we uselithium-ion ones, as opposed to lead acid batteries like the one in your carhave never been used in this type of vehicle before. Much like the motors, these batteries have been around for four or five years, but only recently have we been able to get high-quality ones at cost effective prices. And these have a really high energy density, which leads to lighter weight.

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Who do you imagine will be interested in using this board for transportation purposes?

Well, this could easily be used for most urban commuters in lieu of a car. If you look at the statistics for people that commute to work, 50 percent of all the commutes are under 10 miles. So if you have a charger at work, thats 65 million people who could easily get to work and get back on this every day. And taking an even wider view, more than 60 percent of all car trips are under 5 miles. If youre going on an errand that doesnt involve lugging a lot of weight, you can do so on a single charge.

The benefits are clear. When I moved to the city, I noticed that gas prices, my car insurance, and parking costs all went up, and finding a parking spot became a chore in itself. And unlike a bicycle, you can carry the Marbel Board with you, and not have to worry about locking it up.

But were not naïve. Not everyone wants to ride a skateboard. And we realize theres a challenge in changing how people think about skateboards. Yes, it is a lot of fun, but we dont want to view it as a toy. We people to see it as a vehicle. Whats next?

We certainly want to keep iterating on our productmaking it even lighter, or integrating interchangeable battery backs. Weve also been toying around with a long-distance version that can go up to 20 miles. But that has some major tradeoffs right now. To get to 20 miles you have to add around 2 lbs, tacking on roughly 20 percent more weight, and because the battery cells are one of the most expense parts, that extra mileage significantly adds to the total cost.

And while the Marbel Board is our first step into the market, were not trying to just build electric skateboards. We also hope to use the connections were making to build a complete electric vehicle company. But for now, were totally focused on delivering everything we promised to our Kickstarter funders.

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